We’ve all heard the depressing statistics and seen some fairly horrifying images of the tragedies that occur around the world daily. Whether it’s on the news, in a newspaper or magazine, or in the classroom, the devastation that exists outside of peaceful Saratoga Springs is everywhere–from poverty, to hunger, to poor education, and more. We all know about it, but how many of us actually do something to make a change? Juniors Max Bevan and Kiyo Egashira are two Skidmore students who are taking gigantic strides to do just that. Inspired by their experience abroad, Bevan and Egashira have started The Healthy Scholar Foundation, the mission, they say, that could eventually make a real–and realistic–difference across Africa. Her Campus got the scoop:
Her Campus: Tell us a little about what you’ve been doing and what your plans are with your new project, The Healthy Scholar.
Max Bevan: Kiyo and I started the Healthy Scholar Foundation about two and half months ago. We came up with a plan while studying abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland. We took a class called Economics of Developing Countries where we read a book by Jeffrey Sachs called The End of Poverty,and from that book stemmed these thoughts about what we can do to help. We were talking about it and I said, “Kiyo, what if we started an organization at a college level to incorporate the next generation that’s going to have to deal with the poverty issue?” From there we started to build it into a plan where we would engage college campuses in order to educate students and hopefully get them to contribute a dollar a week for a semester. We started to complete the business plan and to search for an organization to partner with. Millennium Campus Network picked us up and it turned out to be pretty successful. They liked what we were doing and what we were targeting and decided to take us on as an affiliate organization. We’ve partnered with Free the Children to adopt a village for our organization to help. Now we’ve been working on really building it up, inside and outside of the campus. We’ve gotten some great feedback.
HC: Why did you decide to use Free the Children?
MB: Free the Children (FTC) will make our original concept possible, which is for each university that’s involved to adopt a village in Africa—at least Skidmore will operate solely in Africa. FTC operates in several different countries, which we will entertain once we can offer to different schools the options we have for different villages. With FTC, we’ll be able to choose the village within the continent, based on where FTC operates. We can really operate however we’d like; we’ll have the autonomy to decide whether we want to put more money towards infrastructure, education, or health. With our scope and marketing and finance plan, we do believe that, through Skidmore, we can help with all the resources needed for development projects in an entire village. The way we’ll accomplish this is to make a tangible relationship for students to relate to and have a connection to the village; they can start to feel the importance and necessity of outside help.
HC: How will they feel this connection?
MB: There will be a blog that will keep them updated on what improvements are being made: pictures of schools being built, fresh water being brought to them…Also, we are hoping to be able to go to the village and see what’s gotten done, and we’ll then bring back a ton of materials to show what has been accomplished.
Kiyo Egashira: There’s also a Skype chat that will be held once everything’s really up and running. FTC has actually already done it with a few villages so far. Through the web chat, donors can see their impact first-hand.
MB: This is all being developed as we speak. Obviously these are the initial stages in the launching phase, but so far, the response we’ve gotten has been encouraging. We just really want to help fill a void in the college sphere; you know, everyone’s really busy and have other aspects of their life consuming their daily time, so what we’re trying to do is make it as easy as possible for people to get involved. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time or a lot of money, but people canmake a huge difference. We know that in many cases, it’s not that people don’t wantto get involved, they just don’t have the time. So we want to give them that opportunity. If you want to make a difference, this is your chance; we encourage people be inspired, and we hope to inspire them. One of our mottos is “a small price to pay for a whole lot of change.” By giving just one dollar a week students can make a big change for relatively nothing.
HC: Why “The Healthy Scholar”?
MB: Our organization is called “The Healthy Scholar” because that’s what we’re trying to create in Africa: we’re trying to make a relationship between us, the students here, trying to make our lives bigger and better, and them, who don’t have those opportunities. We’ve been given the chance to be healthy scholars and so why not give that chance to someone who really needs it?
HC: How can people donate money?
KE: We’re doing some in-person collections, but right now our main way of collecting donations is through the internet, on our website thehealthyscholar.org, so you can donate with a credit card or a PayPal account. What we suggest people do is to donate for the entire semester at once [$15] if they’re donating online because of the transaction costs. If you donated one dollar at a time, only 70 cents would actually make it to us. With a $15 donation we get almost all of it.
MB: It also just makes it easier so that people don’t have to go online every week. That said, we will have on-campus collections—like one in the d-hall on Saturday, one in the Spa on Wednesday. If they walk by, they can just give as little as a dollar. We figure that if we can get at least a third of the population involved, and there’s at least 3,000 people at this school, including faculty and staff, you’re looking at about 1,000 people donating about $15 per semester, so we’ll receive $15,000. With additional help from donors outside of Skidmore, we hope to gain around $20,000 total.
HC: Have either of you done anything like this before? Or were you solely inspired by your trip?
KE: I have never done anything like this before. I mean that’s how moving this book [The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs] was. The first half is his description of experiences in his life, and the second half is the theoretical standpoint as to why people are in poverty and why they can’t get out of it. As an economics major, it all makes sense, but you don’t have to be an econ major to read it. I would encourage anyone who’s interested to pick up a copy; there’s one in the library.
MB: It’s about how they allocate the income that they do have, which is typically only enough for the basic needs to survive daily or less. If they can’t even give themselves the proper vaccines to prevent disease, or get a mosquito net to prevent malaria, then they’re just surviving; they can’t grow their human capital—they can’t go to school, develop a business…they’re stuck in this vicious circle. Take economics out of it—people think that our models and charts make everything look too easy, but it really is very simple and raw. It comes down to the fact that if they can’t allocate their money to anything else but surviving, then they’re not getting anywhere. So that’s where we’re trying to come in. If we can give them the resources to help them develop past this point, then they can live on their own and not depend on anyone.
HC: Did the book focus only on Africa?
KE: Well, the first part of the book is about Sachs’ experiences all over the world helping governments through economic crises. But the second part of the book is about Africa specifically.
MB: We acknowledge that the problem is everywhere, it’s just right now we have the opportunity to make an impact in Africa. But FTC does operate in other countries, such as India and South America, which we can eventually get involved in.
HC: How will you branch out to other campuses?
MB: Well we already have interest from some schools, such as Elon University in North Carolina. Basically we know our product has validity and viability to it, so we just need to make sure we’re educating people on the topic. As soon as the website grows, people will have a better understanding of what’s happening. With a lot of different clubs and organizations starting to hear about it, they can contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help them start The Healthy Scholar on their campus. That’s our long-term goal: to get this from here to California, and everywhere in between.
HC: You both just got back from being abroad this semester. How have you managed to get so far along?
MB: I mean it has definitely consumed a lot of time, but it’s something we’re passionate about. We’re looking for fellowships or other ways to continue working on it after Skidmore.
HC: How did you approach the charities? What advice do you have for other students who might want to do something like this?
KE: We started with a business plan—just put all our ideas out there. Then we sent it to charities, and at first they didn’t respond, so we just sent it again, and again, and eventually we got a response from the Millennium Campus Network. The people that responded were thrilled; the emails that they sent back were so nice, it really served as motivation for us to work harder. My advice for people out there is to just start and to keep trying.
MB: And make sure your plan is genuine, because they can really see through it all. Just stay persistent and execute what you really want to do, because if you keep coming up a little short, people will question you. Really it’s about the relationships you can make with other people. The other day we got an email from a Skidmore alum who started helping a village in Africa but with just the alumni from that year of 1973. She was a great contact to see what we can do together. At first its hard to encourage people who don’t really know much about it, but if you reach out to people who already have experience with it, they can give you so much advice, and you can learn so much from them.
HC: How can Skidmore students help right now?
MB: Our biggest priority on campus right now is just making people aware of what’s going on in Africa. We’re having a professor help us build a panel with a few other organizations on campus that involve helping people in poverty; hopefully we can fill an auditorium and get people asking questions. Looking forward, we’re building our foundation on this campus, but also reaching out to other schools. Skidmore is our launching pad; success we have here will affect whatever success we have elsewhere, so it’s really essential that the Skidmore community embrace the idea.
To keep up with all the latest news on The Healthy Scholar, and to start donating today, visit their website at thehealthyscholar.org. As our own peers have shown, we can all make a difference!